Nothing More (2 page)

“Dakota?” Aiden's voice overpowers mine as I start to ask them if they want me to add whipped cream, something I do to my own drinks.

Confused, I watch as Aiden reaches over the counter and grabs Dakota's hand. He lifts their hands in the air, and with a big smile she twirls in front of him.

Then, taking a glance at me, she inches away, just a bit, and says more neutrally to him, “I didn't know you worked here.”

I look at Posey to distract myself from eavesdropping on their conversation, then pretend like I'm looking at the schedule on the wall behind her. It's really none of my business who she has friendships with.

“I thought I mentioned it last night?” Aiden says, and I cough to distract everyone from the little squeak that comes out of me.

Fortunately, no one seems to notice except Posey, who tries her best to hide her smile.

I don't look at Dakota even though I can sense she's uncomfortable; in reply to Aiden, she laughs the laugh she gave my grandma upon opening her Christmas gift one year. That cute noise . . . Dakota made my grandma so happy when she laughed at the cheesy singing fish plastered to a fake wooden plank. When she laughs again, I know she's
really
uncomfortable. Wanting to make this whole situation less awkward, I hand her the two coffees with a smile and tell her I hope to see her again soon.

Before she can answer, I smile again and go into the back room, turning the sound up on my headphones.

For a couple of minutes, I wait for the bell to ring again, signaling Dakota and Maggy's exit, before I realize that I probably won't hear it over the sound of yesterday's hockey game playing in my ear. Even with only one bud in, the cheering crowd and slaps of sticks would overpower an old brass bell. I go back out to the floor and find Posey rolling her eyes at Aiden as he shows off his milk-steaming skills to her. The way a cloud of steam floats in front of his white-blond hair makes him look even weirder to me.

“He said they're in school together, at that dance academy he goes to,” Posey whispers when I approach.

I freeze and look toward Aiden, who is oblivious, lost in his own apparently glorious world. “You asked him?” I say, impressed and a little worried about what his answers would be to other questions involving Dakota.

Posey nods, grabbing a metal cup to rinse. I follow her to the sink, and she turns on the hose. “I saw the way you acted when he held her hand, so I thought I'd just ask what was going on with them.”

She shrugs, causing her big mass of curly hair to bounce slightly. Her freckles are lighter than most redheads' I've seen and are scattered across the top of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her lips are big; they pout a tad and she's nearly my height. These were things I noticed on her third day of training, when I suppose my interest flared up for a moment.

“I dated her for a while,” I admit to my new friend, and hand her a towel to dry the cup with.

“Oh, I don't think they're dating. She would be insane to date a Slytherin.” When Posey smiles, my cheeks flare and I laugh along with her.

“You noticed it, too?” I ask.

Reaching between us, I grab a pistachio mint cookie and offer it to her.

She smiles, taking it from my hand and eating half of it before I even manage to get the lid back on the canister.

W
HEN MY SHIFT IS OVER,
I clock out and grab two to-go cups from the counter to make my usual departure drink: two macchiatos; one for me and one for Tess. Not just your ordinary macchiato, though; I add three pumps of hazelnut and one shot of banana-flavored syrup. It sounds gross, but you wouldn't believe how good it is. I made it by accident one day, mixing up the vanilla and banana bottles, but my random concoction has become my favorite drink. Tessa's, too. And now Posey's.

To keep our young, college bodies properly nourished, I'm responsible for the refreshments and Tessa provides dinner most nights with leftovers from Lookout, the restaurant she's at. Sometimes the meal is still warm, but even if it's not, the food there is so good that it's edible hours later. We both manage to drink good coffee and eat gourmet food on a college budget, so it's a pretty sweet setup we have going on.

Tessa's working a late shift tonight, so I take my time in closing down the shop. It's not that I can't be home without her, but I just don't have any reason to rush, and this will keep me from thinking too hard about Dakota and Snakedude. Sometimes I like the silence of an empty home, but I've never lived alone before, and often the buzzing of the refrigerator and the clanging of steam pipes throughout the quiet apartment drives me to the point of insanity. I find myself waiting for the noise of a football game playing from my stepdad's study, or the smell of maple coming from my mom baking in the kitchen. I've nearly finished my course work for the week. The first few weeks of my sophomore year are completely different from my freshman year. I'm happy to be finished with the tedious, required freshman courses and be able to start my early-childhood-education track; it makes me finally feel like I'm getting closer to my career as an elementary-school teacher.

I've read two books this month, I've seen all the good movies that are out, and Tessa keeps the place too clean for me to have any chores to do around the apartment. Basically, I have nothing useful to do with my time and I haven't made many friends outside of Tessa and a couple of coworkers at Grind. With the exception of Posey maybe, I don't think I could actually spend time with any of them outside of the coffee shop. Timothy, a guy in my Social Studies class, is cool. He was wearing a Thunderbirds jersey on the second day of the semester and we struck up a conversation over my hometown hockey team. Sports and fantasy novels are my go-tos when socializing with strangers, something that I'm not the best at to begin with.

My life is pretty uneventful. I take the subway across the bridge to campus, back home to Brooklyn, walk to work, walk home from work. It's become a pattern, a repeated series of events that are completely uneventful. Tessa claims that I'm in a funk, that I need to make some new friends and have some fun. I would tell her to follow her own advice, but I know that it's easier to focus on the overgrown grass in your neighbor's yard than to mow your own. Despite my mom's and Tessa's strong opinion on my lack of a social life, I enjoy myself. I like my job and my classes this semester. I like living in a somewhat cool part of Brooklyn and I like my new college. Sure, it could be better, I know, but everything in my life is okay: simple and easy. No complications, no obligations aside from being a good son and friend.

I check the clock on the wall and cringe when I notice it's not even ten yet. I had kept the doors open longer than usual for a group of women talking about divorce and babies. There were a lot of “Ohs” and “Oh nos!” so I figured I would leave them in peace until they solved one another's life problems and were ready to go. At a quarter after nine, they left, their table covered in napkins, cold half-drunk coffee, and half-eaten pastries. I didn't mind the mess because it kept me busy for a few extra minutes. I spent so much time closing . . . meticulously placing stacks of napkins into metal canisters . . . sweeping the floor one straw wrapper at a time . . . and walking as slowly as I possibly could to fill up the ice bins and canisters of ground coffee.

Time isn't on my side tonight; I'm beginning to question my relationship with Dakota. Yeah, time rarely works in my favor, but tonight it's teasing me more than usual. Each minute that passes is sixty seconds of mockery; the little hand on the clock keeps ticking, slowly, but those ticks don't seem to add up—it doesn't feel like time is moving at all. I begin playing that elementary-school game of holding my breath in thirty-second increments to pass the time. After a few minutes of this, I'm bored and move to the back room with the cashier drawer and count the money from the day. The shop is silent, except for the buzzing of the ice machine in the back room. Finally, it's ten and I can't stall any longer.

Before leaving, I glance around the shop one last time. I'm positive I didn't miss anything, not one coffee bean is out of place. I usually don't close alone. My schedule alternates between closing with Aiden and closing with Posey. Posey offered to stay with me, but I overheard her talking about having trouble finding a sitter for her sister. Posey is quiet and she doesn't share much of her life with me, but from what I can gather, the little girl seems to be at the center of it.

I lock the safe and turn on the security system before I close and lock the door behind me. It's cold out tonight, a slight chill comes from the water and settles over Brooklyn. I like being close to the water, and for some reason, the river makes me feel some sort of detachment from the hustle of the city. Despite its proximity, Brooklyn is nothing like Manhattan.

A group of four—two women and two men—walks past as I lock up and step out onto the sidewalk. I watch as the two couples split into handholding pairs. The taller of the guys is wearing a Browns jersey and I wonder if he's checked their stats for the season. If he had, he probably wouldn't be prancing around in that thing with such pride. I watch them as I follow in their wake. The Browns fan is louder than the rest of the bunch and has an obnoxiously deep voice to boot. He's drunk, I think. I cross the street to get away from them and call my mom to check on her. By “check on her,” I mean let her know that I'm fine and that her only child survived another day in the big city. I ask how she's feeling, but in typical fashion she pushes that aside to ask about me.

My mom wasn't as worried about the idea of me moving as I thought she would be. She wants me to be happy, and going to New York to be with Dakota made me happy. Well, it was supposed to. My move was supposed to be the glue that would keep our fraying relationship together. I thought that the distance was the thing that was chipping away at us, but I hadn't realized it was freedom she craved. Her freedom-seeking came so unexpected to me because I'd never acted possessive with her. I never tried to control her or tell her what to do. I'm just not like that. Since the day the spunky girl with the noodles for hair moved in next door, I knew there was something special about her. Something so special and real, and I never, ever wanted to hide that. How could I? Why would I? I reinforced her independence and pushed for her to keep her sharp tongue and strong opinions. For the entire five years we were together, I treasured her strength and tried to give her everything she needed.

When she was afraid to move from Saginaw, Michigan, to the Big Apple, I found a way to calm her fear. I've had the experience of a few moves myself; I moved from Saginaw to Washington just before my senior year of high school. I constantly reminded her of her very good reasons for wanting to go to NYC: how much she loved dance and how talented she was at it. Not a day passed when I didn't remind her how great she was and how proud of herself she should be. With blistered toes and bleeding feet, she rehearsed day and night. Dakota has always been one of the most motivated people I've ever met. Excellent grades came easier to her than they did to me, and she always had a job when we were teens. When my mom was working and couldn't drop her off, she rode her bike a mile to her cashier's job at a truck stop. Once I turned sixteen and got my license, she let her dad pawn her bicycle for extra cash and I gladly drove her.

And yet, in her family life I suppose freedom was something Dakota never felt like she had. Her dad tried to keep her and her brother, Carter, prisoner in their redbrick house. The sheets that he tacked over the windows couldn't keep either of his children inside. When she got to New York, she saw a new type of living. Watching her dad wither away into nothing with anger and booze wasn't living. Trying to wash away the guilt of her brother's death wasn't living. She realized that she had never truly lived. I had begun living the day I met her, but for her it wasn't the same.

As much as the destruction of our relationship hurt, I didn't hold it against her. I still don't. But I can't say that it didn't cause me real pain in addition to erasing the future we had mapped out together. I thought I would come to New York and share an apartment with her. I had assumed that every morning I would wake up to her legs wrapped around mine, the sweet smell of her hair in my face. I thought we would make memories while learning the ways of the city together. We were supposed to take strolls through parks and pretend to understand the art hanging in fancy museums. I expected so much when I started planning my move here. I expected it to be the beginning of my future, not the end of my past.

To her credit, she saw things coming, saw her feelings for what they were, and broke up with me before I moved out here. Rather than try to fake it for some time before it blew up in both of our faces, she was honest with me. Still, by the time she finally ended things, I was too invested in the move to change my mind. I had already transferred schools and put a deposit on an apartment. I don't regret it, and looking back, I think it was what I needed. I'm not completely enthralled by the city yet—its charm hasn't really hypnotized me like it does some, and I don't think I'll stay here after I graduate—but I like it enough for now. I would like to settle somewhere quiet, with a big yard and sunlight that makes everything gorgeous and browns my skin.

It helps that Tessa moved here with me. I'm not happy about the circumstances that brought her, but I'm glad I could provide an escape for her. Tessa Young was the first friend I made at Washington Central University, and she sort of ended up being the only one I had up until I left. She was the first and only friend I made in Washington, and vice versa. Her freshman year was rough. She fell in love and got her heart broken almost simultaneously. I was in a weird place, between my stepbrother, who I was trying to build a relationship with, and my best friend, Tessa, whose wounds came from the same man.